BIOS reformating issue!

Maqqieman

Beta member
Messages
3
Hello Everyone,
About 3 weeks ago I caught a virus on my pc so I decided to reformat. However my mother board is an ASUS A8V-E Deluxe (PCI-Express) and apparently I neeed some boot disk with SATA RAID drives during a reformat. Anyway I didn't know about this and after the reformat I corrupted my hard drive.

I sent my pc in for repairs and told them the problem. They said they'd set the BIOS to standard settings so next time when I reformat, I won't have to use any extra disks. About 2 weeks ago, I got the pc back. I installed my games on it and started playing but then the pc began acting really strange. At random times the screen would go to a blue screen that said something like "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down.... etc.". I tried hard to find out the problem, but due to it's random occurance it was extremely difficult. Finally I decided to reformat the whole pc and install application by applicationand test.

Well just about 30 mins ago I tried to reformat, only finding that only my D drive can be unpartitioned. My C drive can't, thus I can't clear Windows and do a clean reformat. This is really fustrating as I told pc guy to set the BIOS so I can REFORMAT NEXT TIME!

Does anyone give me a step by step explination as to how to change the BIOS so I can unpartition the C drive when I boot through the Windows XP disk?

Thank you very much.

Maqqieman
 
Right well formatting won't help as its probably the RAM at fault, so how many sticks of RAM have you got in the computer. RAM would be causing the blue screens at random times, and is usually the case.

So you'll find its not the bios at all :( If you have two sticks, i'd advise to take one out and try that one, and then swap and try again if that one doesn't work, then buying a replacment of the same spec.

I've never really liked SATA, though it should allow you to reformat C, and shoudln't have this problem, and I don't like the fact with SATA you have to install drives before installing windows.

This could also be a sign though your hard drives going, so if this is the case, i'd just buy an IDE drive and get alot of drive space for cheap and use this as you wouldn't get the installation problems you have when installing IDE, though it should defineitly allow you to reformat, no problems and so i ophe sdomeone can sortyuo out with this.

I hope this helps :)
 
Thank you very much for your post Kage.

I don't think the problem has to do with the SATA drive (not sure what it is though - I am practically computer illitterate) because I was able to unpartition the C and D drive before I brought my pc in for repairs. The only reason I brought in my pc for repairs was due to the fact that I had unpartitioned the C and D drives and was re-installing Windows XP but had not inserted the SATA drives whilst installing windows, thus corrupting the hard drive.

Once I had brought my pc in for repairs, the salesman told me they'd set the BIOS to the standard mode so I wouldn't have to use any extra floppy disk when reformating my pc. The problem now (I believe) is that the change they made in the BIOS disabled the feature that allowed me to unpartition the C drive. Now I am unable to clear Windows. I can only unpartition the D drive at the moment.

In concern to the RAM, I am hoping that it's in working order since everytime I bring my pc in for repairs they check each individual hardware piece before actually fixing any problem I may have. So far I have brought my pc in for 2 repairs.

As a side issue, the blue screens I got always produced different error messages. Here they are in order:

1) A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated

2) KERNEL_DATAINPAGE_ERROR

3) UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

4) SESSION3_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

Note error 2 occured when I turned my pc of via the power supply and rebooted it. Error 3 occured when I restarted the pc right after problem 2. Problem 4 occured when I manually rebooted my pc because I had disconnected my mouse. All these problems occured when the pc was booting up, except problem 1 which occured spontaneously when I was playing a pc game.

Any advice (particularly with setting the BIOS to allow me to unpartition C) will be greatly appreciated :)

Cheers

Maqqieman
 
Kage said:
I don't like the fact with SATA you have to install drives before installing windows.

This could also be a sign though your hard drives going

Oh! before I forget. I think installing these drives before I install windows is a requirement of the motherboard. My pc is fairly new (I bought it at the beginning of this year) and the salesman told me I would have to create a boot disk and use it when installing windows. The user manual also explains how to create the disk.

Just to let you guys know, my pc specs are:
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 FX-53 Processor (2.40ghz)
RAM: 1.00 GB
Video Card: ASUS Extreme AX800
Motherboard: A8V-E Deluxe

I am using PCI-Express instead of AGP.

Thanks again

Maqqieman
 
Maqqieman,

Check here for your SATA drivers: http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Are you hitting F6 when you're loading XP? As soon as the blue XP screen comes up, at the bottom it will ask you if you have third party software that needs to be installed. It comes up fast, so just start hitting F6 several times. Have the SATA drivers on a floppy. A screen will come up saying something like "to Specify blah blah blah ..." select S and insert your disk. Load appropriate driver for your OS - XP. After it installs the drivers the screen will return to the "to Specify blah blah blah..." Hit enter and continue on. Follow the steps on how to delete partitions (D>enter>L, I think) and get all the partitions back to one giant one.
 
Back
Top Bottom